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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does postmodern influence portray existence?

2. What role does Wilson ascribe to human nature?

3. What are effective ethical codes based on?

4. How does Wilson describe the difference between gifted and less-gifted artists' brains?

5. Where does postmodernism fail to accord with science, in Edmund Wilson's account?

Short Essay Questions

1. What role does the incest taboo have in genetic and cultural development?

2. What is the sign, in EO Wilson's account, that culture is evolving?

3. What role does Wilson say creativity has in survival and evolution?

4. What threats to contemporary culture does Wilson describe, and how is consilience useful in answering them?

5. What social science does Wilson credit with coming closest to consilience?

6. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the Transcendental view?

7. How does postmodern art resist consilience, in E.O. Wilson's account?

8. Where does ethics come from, in E.O. Wilson's account?

9. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

10. What does Wilson say is the relationship between human genetics and the development of culture?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Are 'epi-genetic rules' really just another way of saying complex social factors that have to be experienced individually? Does Wilson really evade the complexity and individuality of experience and sensation and language use?

Essay Topic 2

How would you respond to a reviewer who wrote that after Wilson leaves his discussion of biology and reductionism, which were his fields of training, he loses authority, and ventures into fields he is not expert in, where his ideas about art and religion are off-base, and his argument about objectivity is tautological. Is this a fair critique?

Essay Topic 3

What kinds of situations or uses would consilience be best for, and what kinds of knowledge or what situations would not benefit by a 'consilient' perspective? What are the limitations of Wilson's consilience? What are the strengths?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 719 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample